Chronicling the Lives of Women Along the Colombian-Venezuelan Border

Juanita Escobar, one of this year’s Magnum Foundation Fund grantees, reveals the secrets of a transforming border town.

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Liz at the Bita River beaches. Lying on the beach is possible only during the summer, when the rains stop for six months and the beaches appear from the rivers. Puerto Carreño, Vichada Department, Colombia, 2017.CreditCreditJuanita Escobar

Juanita Escobar likes to immerse herself in her projects. The self-taught photographer spent eight years living among the llaneros, the cowboys who work the plains of Colombia.Now she has gone even farther, moving to what is perhaps her country’s most rural — and distant — 300 kilometer stretch of the Orinoco River, where she has been chronicling life along the border between Colombia and Venezuela.

Just getting there from Bogotá can be an ordeal that takes most of a day (and night). Once she arrives at her home base in Puerto Carreño, visiting other parts along the river can prove equally daunting, forcing her to rely on local health groups or nongovernmental organizations (N.G.O.s) to get to hard-to-reach indigenous communities.

There’s no way she can parachute to this story. The river has secrets, as do the people who live there and try to eke out a living. Life has been further complicated by the unceasing flow of refugees from Venezuela who are fleeing economic and political calamity. It all makes for a complex tale as Ms. Escobar has spent the last three years looking at how women live in this region that is approximately the size of Portugal.

“When it comes to the women, what are the differences in their thoughts, the territory and the indigenous people?” she said. “I have a personal interest in telling the stories of women on the periphery.There is also another factor in that all kinds of people live in Puerto Carreño, from all over the country, who went there looking to do all types of business, legal and illegal.”

Ms. Escobar’s immersive project just got a big boost, as she was among the recipients of this year’s Magnum Foundation Fund grantees. The other recipients include: Sagar Chhetri, Diana Markosian, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, the Nepal PictureLibrary, Sarker Protick, Lindokuhle Sobekwa, and Martin Weber.

For Ms. Escobar, the funds will enable her to pursue her project at her own pace, without having to rely so much on others to get around. She traverses a region that is in many ways its own country, where the river’s presence is constant.

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Amorua girls living at Puerto Carreño. The Amorua ethnic group is the one that has suffered most the discrimination arising from the coming into contact with development and colonizers.CreditJuanita Escobar

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Fishing day at Casuarito border Town at the Orinoco river. ColombiaCreditJuanita Escobar

“The river, historically, has marked this dynamic of life on the periphery and along borders,” said Ms. Escobar, 32.“It’s also associated with dreams of El Dorado, to extractive industries that take out resources.”

She likens the local economy’s structure to one dominated by modern day robber barons who have enriched themselves through trade in everything from animal skins and feathers to cocaine and gold. Over all, members of 10 different indigenous groups account for 80 percent of the population. Some of them have been seminomadic, she said, while others have been able to establish themselves far from outside interference.

Many of them pass through Puerto Carreño, which she said was founded as an outpost by the government 80 years ago. As with any border town, there is a mix of adventurers, rascals, robbers and people trying to survive. But the town’s indigenous residents, she said, face marginalization and discrimination.

Ms. Escobar noted that indigenous girls as young as 10 have been ensnared in prostitution and drug use, living like indigents on the street.The situation has been made worse by the flood of refugees from Venezuela, where desperation has led some women — including professionals — to engage in sex work to feed their families.

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View of the Orinoco River from Flag Hill at Puerto Carreño, the departmental capital of Vichada in Colombia. On the other side of the river is Amazonas State, Venezuela.CreditJuanita Escobar

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Lourdes wearing the traditional dress she made as a handicraft. At the Flag Hill, Puerto Carreño.CreditJuanita Escobar

What is infuriating, she said, is that there is actually a governmental presence in town, albeit one that apparently has absolved itself of responsibility.

“For example, there is a representative of the Institute for Children, the police and military,” she said. “All the forces of the state are there, but none of them is focused on dealing with these themes and the great amount of discrimination. They say the indigenous have their own law, but that is just one way to absolve themselves of responsibility.”

Despite the town’s chaos and the marginalization of the poor, she is determined to explore other themes that show alternative, hopeful perspectives. One group, the Piaroa, have established a community in a distant part of the region. And that remoteness, she said, can be a salvation.

“What fractured these indigenous cultures is the encounter with the colonizers,” she said.“But they have organized where everyone has a place, there is well-being and the teachers know the indigenous language. I want to show these other communities where they are calm. When you get away from Puerto Carreño you see other ways the indigenous can develop their culture and community. I do not see them as lost.”